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Windows Update and the Real Reason IE6 Still Exists!

I think I have stumbled across the real reason (or at least one of many) that IE6 still exists and many people still use it as their primary browser! Unfortunately I have come across this at the cost of my computer, at least for a couple of days at least.

A while ago my computer informed me, via an annoying little popup that Windows Update (or MS update technically) has some updates available for me. I tend to ignore that message for quite a while, and now I remember why. That message itself is a little misleading. It looks like:

This is all well and good but, well, basically it is wrong! I think Microsoft made a mistake here when they wrote the message and so I have decided to recreate it for them:

Or to paraphrase, the Update button should be renamed “Self-Destruct”. That would be a much better way to describe what it will do to your computer. Click below to read more!

Now I know that it doesn’t *always* crash your computer but I have had enough of it now. I finally decided to give in to the temptation (and the nagging!) and click the big update button. It then proceeded to download the few hundred MB’s of updates and start to install them. This all went well but it decided to hang on the 16th update, which is apparently because Windows Live Essentials update setup was asking me a question. If it had flashed the icon in the taskbar perhaps I might have noticed... Or maybe even brought it to the front, that would have been a nice touch. But no it left the installer window behind the update progress window.

I thought okay, it is allowed one mistake that is fine. And obviously being updates to the system it needs to restart, my Mac also does that, I’m used to it by now. But when I restart to be met with a black screen and a flashing cursor I am not happy. Went into the BIOS and set slow boot to true to see if that would perform some checks to fix it. Nope. The time by this point was 00:30am and I wanted my bed so I left it.

I guess my next steps will be to boot into the install CD and repair my system. However this brings me nicely onto the IE6 issue. How many people has this happened to in years gone by? How many average computer users know how to solve this problem? And how many people end up taking their computer to be repaired each time they update?

This makes me think that many average users will be scared to update in case it breaks. That is why IE6 still exists for some people, they are too scared to update to the newer browsers through Windows Update. And yes I realize that that is no excuse for not switching to Chrome or Firefox or even Opera, and yes I understand that some people keep it because the work system only works on it, but how many people are too scared to upgrade in a day and age where it should work flawlessly?!

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Update - The Next Day:

So I decided to pop in the Windows 7 Install DVD and attempt to repair my installation... Went through the usual language setting screen and selected to 'Repair Computer' and it brought up the usual options. The first of which was 'Repair startup issues' - I thought, Perfect! that should do the trick! However I was wrong, I ran it twice to make sure but nope it couldn't fix any issues, or even find any.

I then moved onto the next viable option, restoring to the previous restore point just before updates started... I went away for a cup of tea at this point as it took about half an hour. I came back and it had failed. I thought fine, I can deal with that as I have another one earlier on in the day from another update of another program. Apart from that one failed too.

By this point I was very bored and decided to just to restart and see if anything had indeed happened. So I popped the CD out and restarted and voila! It started! And when I had logged in it informed me I had successfuly restored my computer (though to when I have no idea). I decided then that I wouldn't do anymore updates for a while until I had the time to fix it if things went wrong so I proceeded to ignore the annoying popup and carry on with my day. Little did I know that it was scheming against me all the time!

3am that night. That was when my computer decided it needed to wake up and install the updates, but I'm a heavy sleeper and didn't know until the morning when I found that I had been logged out. But the computer had started, so I don't know what it did right this time but something worked for once.

I was quick to set updates to download automatically but wait for me to install them to stop my computer waking up at 3am and making my whole room glow blue (and waste a lot of power I might add!)

So that is the extent of my troubles with Windows Update and another reason why I think people are still using IE6 (ignoring those folk who are forced to use it by their workplace!)